The Paperweight Problem
by Aeanagwen
Summary: Talpa won, but no one wins forever. Dais—abides.


Time—passes. Perhaps.

Perhaps seasons change. Perhaps the moon shifts in its phase. Perhaps stars are born, and gutter, and die. Perhaps mere moments slip away, scarcely enough to shift a shadow. Perhaps.

Dais drifts, his consciousness moored to his armor like a sea mark bound by its slim chain to a sunken iron weight. Power flows around and through him, water sieving through fine cloth. The priests' droning becomes a mantra, spinning around and around a prayer wheel, and the sound saps him of all will.

There's no pain in the spell—a strange absence, after so many years. There was always pain before, the dealing of it or the threat of it or the suffering of it. Before—sometime before the towers, and the end—he had tormented Hardrock with the corruption of the nine armors. Perhaps Hardrock was right back then after all, for in this drifting, no malice dogs at his heels, no pain unravels his dignity.

Images creep across his mind, in intervals he cannot number or predict. Wildfire battling Dynasty warriors back-to-back with Anubis—no, with Kayura, clad in the armor of Cruelty. Wildfire's white beast leading Anubis, now dressed in the Ancient One's garb, through a mist-draped forest. The two Jewel-bearers, the woman and the boy, helping each other to their feet as a dome of violet light springs to life around them and scours away a whole flight of priests.

His armor of Illusion, he suspects, for as hopeful as the visions are, hope pricks like a poisoned needle here, a cruelty like no other. But then, his grandfather ( _before and before and before_ ) had spoken of a different power held by the family armor—Infinity. Dais never did unlock such a power. Talpa had claimed it a lie, a lack of understanding.

Illusion as the whole and all of his armor's power—perhaps this is as false as the face of a coin glued to the floor.

Would that Infinity—if Infinity is real—could have shown him this ending.

 _Infinity is real, Dais._

The voice tugs at him, drawing him back length over length towards consciousness. Not his own voice, nor the priests', nor Talpa's nor Badamon's.

 _Your visions are true._

Anubis.

Dais doesn't open his eyes—he has no control over his physical body now, has not since he was sent up onto that wretched barge, and Anubis' voice did not return him so much to himself that that has changed. All the same, something— _shifts._ A vision swims into place in his mind's eye—a castle courtyard, empty, but in the way that such a place might be if caught in a quiet stray moment, not overgrown and falling to disrepair like a truly abandoned place would be. Above the polished, dark roof tiles, the sky is a shade of blue that, Dais realizes with a pinprick of shock, he has forgotten existed.

It seems familiar, in the distant way of a long-forgotten dream. The wind ripples the banners with their distant emblems atop the buildings, and blows in his hair—suddenly, physicality. A scent on the breeze—maple, or pine? He closes his good eye ( _had it been open?_ ), drinking in the sensations. His entire body prickles and twinges, as if the whole of him had been pressed under a great hand until his circulation nearly ceased, and now everything returns all at once.

Someone sits down next to him. Anubis, yet not Anubis. Not the Anubis he knew for so long, in any case. His power reverberates differently now. No tramping of footsteps echo his own, no scent of rotting peach blossom clings to his shoulders, no shiver of fear announces his presence (as Cale had been welcomed by a clinging patina of shadow, and Sekhmet a shudder of some heretofore unknown frailty—the warlords' armors had all had such echoes, even to their fellow bearers).

This power is the Ancient One's, few enough times though Dais crossed paths with _that_ grey-hair. The cool depths of spring rivers, deceptively clear and treacherously swift. The song of constellations, the repetitions and revolutions of ages.

And yet there is something of Anubis there still—the clarity of him, perhaps, or the persistent, vexatious sense of his ambition, an energy thrumming beneath his skin, impatient as youth.

"I won't disappear if you open your eye," the man sitting beside him says, a trace of amusement curling the edges of his words, and ah, _now_ the voice sounds real. Dais must be burrowed deep in his own mind now, far distant from waking reality, for this illusion to seem so strong.

Dais opens his eye to stare out across the courtyard again. "A shame. This would be a good view, otherwise."

"I see captivity hasn't taken the sting out of your tongue," Anubis replies after a beat of silence—had he expected surprise? Gratitude? But he is either free or a figment, and either way, Dais does not care for his feelings.

"I never spoke to you respectfully, and I don't plan to start now. What do you want?" Dais itches to stand, to _move,_ and as he just reflected, he cares not for Anubis's thoughts on the matter, and so he stands, stretching his arms and rotating his shoulders. He finds, to his mild surprise, that he isn't wearing his armor, or even his under gear, just hakama pants and a kimono whose grey-green shade he feels might once have been known to him. The weight of the armor sits on him still, even so; he can sense it like another layer of cloth draped about his shoulders. He could, almost, reach out and brush his fingertips over it, calling that power home…

"Don't," Anubis says, standing with a crash of chiming metal—Dais turns, and sets eye on his visitor for the first time, the blue and white monk's robes, the golden staff with its dancing rings. "Disturbing the connection will draw Talpa's eye to you."

Dais laughs, the sound hollow. "I am never _not_ under his eye, Anubis. Has death made you so forgetful?"

"Death has…" Anubis closes his eyes, only for a moment, against some impossible weight. "Opened me new paths. Paths Talpa cannot always trace."

"Then let me ask you again. What do you want?" He can sense the truth of it now, familiar even in his ignorance, like the dimensions of a well-known room even at the darkest hour of the night. The space around him is a conjured one, partly his Illusion's power and partly something _else_ —a gap being bridged like a poem scaffolding words around a frozen moment—but there is none of Talpa's power in it, none at all. Yet the presence clings to him, the press of air before a storm. Talpa is not in the building blocks, the bricks or beams of the place, but he is, perhaps, in the spaces between, and disturbing the balance overmuch will break this dream apart like a soap bubble.

"Only to visit."

Dais turns to face Anubis, and finds only solemn concern engraved on his face—that damnably young face that had never aged beneath the Netherworld's pale sun or Talpa's rough hand, no matter how many long years passed, or how many punishments.

"You're joking."

"No."

"…Why?"

Anubis sits back down, balancing the staff across his knees. Drawn nearer to him as if he were a moth chasing an imitation sun, Dais steps in towards him again, looking down to regard him. Anubis returns the attention with half a smile and a head tipped to one side in acknowledgement of the question.

"Because it does a man no good to wander too far from his body, yet a man imprisoned must also let his mind roam to stave off madness." Anubis knits his fingers together and rests his chin atop them, regarding Dais with a patient gaze. "Talpa would be happy to see you all lost or mad. Wildfire and Lady Kayura have their own battles to fight—they and the Jewel Bearers are on a great journey even now. I cannot help them on their current path. But I can see to it that yours and the others' does not wander into darkness."

Dais holds his silence for a long moment, taking in Anubis's words—Anubis's news, if those words prove his visions true.

"You expect to have some use for us still, then," he says at last, and Anubis at least grants him the respect of nodding before attempting to soften the presumption.

"The nine armors have always been fated to end Talpa's reign. But nine armors must have nine bearers, and…" He trails off, and looks out over the courtyard himself. Finally, he sighs, and begins again. "You may laugh if you wish, Dais, but there is also this: I feel enough loyalty to the warlords that I would see them freed, and given the power to reclaim their—"

Dais does laugh. The absurdity of it all rips through him like jagged teeth, a groundswell burst of memory and mania, and his laughter rings through the courtyard, echoing back off the dark stones and white walls.

"We were enemies for centuries, you fool! Every one of us would have sold the others to the lava pits in a heartbeat! And we hated _you_ most of all!" He steps forward, his shadow falling over Anubis's expressionless face, and grins down at his old rival, grins so widely his jaw aches. "Always the youngest, always the favorite. The boldest, the cruelest. We would have cut you down a thousand times if it weren't for Talpa, and you'd have done the same to us if you could have. Loyalty? What kind of witless dolt do you take me for?"

Still, Anubis doesn't move, simply holding their gaze. Weaponless, Dais could still strike him, kick him, tear at that devilish red hair and bare Anubis's throat to the crystal sky. His palms itch with the need for it, his soul trembles with the desire to call his armor home and strike Anubis down. But as much as Dais long to hurl himself into the simplest and most brutal sort of biting, kicking, graceless melee, the memory of darkness stays his hand. The darkness waits still, outside of this illusion. The gaps of time, the strange visions, the priests' droning; Anubis's presence is all that keeps them at bay,

"I think," Anubis says finally, and the corrects himself. "No. I _know_ that you are a man capable of enduring more than anyone. Serenity is your virtue, as loyalty is mine."

Another bubbling laugh escapes Dais's lips, shorter and more muted; he stares down at Anubis with a disbelief that feels almost like affection. "What did that ghost teach you, self-deception? Men like us don't _have_ virtues. Not anymore."

Anubis shakes his head at that, frowning. "That is Talpa's lie. He may have created the armors, but the Ancient One set his mark on them too, when he split them apart a thousand years ago. If you did not carry the same virtue as the Infinity Armor, you would never have so much as touched its summoning orb.

"The warlords are not faultless. But neither are you wholly lost."

Dais's grin fades in the face of Anubis' plain-spoken conviction. His gaze is unyielding, a stonework carving of resolution, and Dais cannot match it. His eyes fall to the stones.

 _Always the strongest. Damn you, Anubis._

"…You visit the others as well, then," he says after a silence, and this time does not look to make eye contact.

"I do," Anubis answers. "Some fare better than you, some worse. Cale walks in shadows, sometimes hunting, sometimes hunted. Sekhmet—"

"Crazier than usual?"

"There is a way through to him," Anubis answers, as good as affirmation. "But he frenzies when he feels anyone approach, whatever their intention. It leaves me little time."

"And the Ronin?"

"Halo and Strata have some ability for meditation. They will be safe and strong for as long as we need them to be and longer. Torrent drifts, but fluidity is in his element—he will abide."

Dais smirks, thoughts turning to a rival far more poorly matched. "That does not bode well for the last."

"Hardrock…" Anubis curls one hand around his chin in thought. "I suspect his mind seeks out the path of stone and iron, before the gate of ascension. I think he will break the tower holding him before anyone."

"And then you'll have to dig him out of the rubble," Dais surmises. "Well, as someone who watched him drop half a tunnel on himself to evade a few illusions, let me assure you that he'll live."

"Yes. But it would be helpful if he could be convinced to wait for the proper time, rather than the moment he uncovers the ability."

"He doesn't 'convince' easily," Dais says with a sneer in his tone, "but he's easily steered. Give him something to chase and he'll follow it every time."

Anubis hums at the advice, looking up at Dais from his perch on the steps. After a moment of silent regard, he smiles, a rueful curve at one side of his mouth, and looks down. "It is a trait we armor-bearers have in common, I think. That inability to let things bide."

Dais scoffs, crossing his arms. His protest— _speak for yourself; unlike you, I_ —fades before it reaches his tongue, his mind racing ahead to a conclusion opposite the one he nearly spoke. His tactics might favor patience, but Talpa ensnared him with a lure of knowledge and power, the same as any of the other warlords. And for his greed, and his haste, he's now—how had he phrased it to Cale back then? A paperweight?

He sighs heavily and sits back down, a measured distance away from his one-time companion and rival. The two of them sit for a time in silence, and Dais looks out over the rooftops again, trying to memorize the color of the sky and the feel of the wind, even if they're nothing but more illusions in the end. His gaze catches on the fluttering banners again, and he squints at them, frowning. Purple on white, a spiral of curves around a central shape. The curves are widest at the center, narrowing as they spin further out like the tail of the Jewel of Life. A narrower line bisects each of the three curves, giving them a look like the spine and body of a fish viewed from above, or a stem down the center of…

 _The family crest,_ he thinks, a realization that scrapes at the inside of his chest with dulled claws. Memory fills in the details that the distance obscures—the wisteria trails, lush with petals, aligned in their three magatama curves around a central flower.

The castle, the smell of the pines, his grandfather, the crest… Could he remember all of that, before now? He tries to grasp at more, reaching for a name that sits just out of his reach.

 _What is my name? Dais. Only Dais now._

He closes his eye against the grief of it, trying to muffle the hitch in his breath as the wind turns cold. In the distance, somewhere past the courtyard, past the unseen pine trees, past the sky, he hears a faint humming sound, a persistent ringing like the sound of a singing bowl, or the ocean in a conch shell.

"They have sensed something," Anubis says beside him, a throaty rasp of disappointment that barely rises above a whisper. He stands. "I must go, and banish this place before they find it."

"Will you be able to find it again?" Dais asks suddenly, looking up as he voices the plea. He huddles in his place on the steps, feeling the cold seep into his skin, threading through his veins with the swiftness of a spider's bite. _Pathetic_ , he thinks, but searches Anubis's face for hope all the same.

Anubis blinks at him, once, caught by surprise again, and then his mouth turns upward into a smile—gentle and proud, and it makes Dais want to spit and curse, but it also lays a hand over his heart and spreads its warmth, pushing back against the chill of despair.

"It came from you, Dais," he answers, stooping into a quick kneel, the Ancient One's staff held out beside him, its base planted firmly on the stone. "Your armor of Infinity called it forth. Of course you'll see it again."

He flicks his hand once, and the staff's rings dance and chime, overpowering the distant, rising drone. He reaches up and runs his free hand across Dais's brow. Before Dais can even think to jerk back, Anubis has his fingers tangled in white hair, thumb pressed to the center of Dais's forehead.

"But for now, we must put it away," Anubis's voice says, as the image of the courtyard, the scent of the pine, the blue of the sky and the distant snap of the banners on the wind, all of it flickers and vanishes, leaving Dais standing in the void alone, with the warmth of Anubis's hand still burning against his skin.

 _Fold it up and tuck it away inside you. I will meet you there again when I can._

"I'll save it for myself, not for you," Dais mutters, hands balled into fists. Already, he is losing the sense of himself; the darkness drawing over him bleeds the feeling from his extremities like nightfall stealing away the color of the daytime world.

He takes one last breath, while he can still feel the air in his lungs, and holds it.

The blackness deepens; at the edges of it, he can feel the distant contours of his own body, his armor resting heavy on his shoulders, his hands lying still and half-curled on his legs, his breathing even and undisturbed. The priests' chanting fills up the room, fills up his mind, falling on his ears like the edge of a knife.

He breathes out, pushes his consciousness away from his body, and releases himself to the darkness, and Infinity.

END

* * *

NOTES:

The warlords' true names, for all that they can't remember them, are tied to historical Japanese lineages, which therefore point to historical references! In lieu of a link, a quick google search for the Kuroda family crest will bring up the specific emblem Dais sees on the flags here.

The title is a reference to a line Dais has in the dub near the end of the series. When Cale suggests that they should honorably submit to the will of their liege lord Talpa, to channel the nine armors' power into him so that he can regain his proper form and power, Dais snaps back that there is no honor to be had in being Talpa's paperweight.


End file.
